


People would judge our parenting, you know?

by FreakingOutGirl



Series: Son of a Exy! [14]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Andrew actually names the cat... somehow, Animal Rescue, Domestic Fluff, Luke finds a kitten on the street, M/M, Neil and Andrew are soft, Neil loves Andrew really, Neil loves cats, Neil loves small mammals, animal adoption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 10:32:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12274596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreakingOutGirl/pseuds/FreakingOutGirl
Summary: “Did you break anything expensive?” Andrew asked as a way of hello and Luke laughed,“Of course not, old man! Don’t you trust me?”“When you are acting like a scared squirrel, no, not really…” Andrew replied, nodding at Luke’s quickly moving hands, beating a quick tempo against his leg.“I’m training for my music class, keeping the rhythm right…” Luke replied and Andrew scrunched his nose.orLuke finds a kitten on the street and at first tries to hide his new pet from Neil and Andrew. Obviously he fails miserably, it took them exactly two hours to find out and four days of seeing Luke freaking out until he confess...





	People would judge our parenting, you know?

Luke looked up at the grey sky above him and wondered about his options. On one hand he was confident enough that he could reach his home before the rain fell on him, on the other hand he had no umbrella,in case he was wrong. On one hand, George’s mom was waving at him from her car, while her son walked beside Luke and Leah, after their Exy training finished, later than usual; on the other hand the woman had a crush on Luke’s parents, always hammering him about the famous people they knew and how secretly romantic Andrew might be. Luke always had to stop himself from exploding in laughter every time the woman went a bit wild with her romantic imagination.

“Thanks, but I will walk…” Luke replied to George’s offered ride. He could see what the lady was reading, a book with a half naked guy on the cover, and sure as hell her imagination would be wilder than ever. Leah looked at him, worried, traded a look with George and both sighed, before entering the car. Luke almost told them the real reason for him to refuse the ride, since he could clearly see they were imagining some dramatic reason, probably based on a painful past, for his refusal. Luke, once again, stopped himself from laughing out loud.

Seeing the car disappear, Luke put on his headphones, and started walking in fast strides. However, no matter how fast he moved, the clouds were still faster than him and in a couple of minutes, he was getting drenched and running for cover.

Stopping under a closed coffee shop's entrance, Luke sighed, shaking his head like a dog, to ride his hair of all the water. He took his phone from his bag, ready to call one of his parents, when he heard a weird noise. It came from behind a dumpster, a mixture of a whine and ruffle.

Luke looked around, hoping for someone else that could walk there and find out what the noise was, but apparently, he was the only one stupid enough to walk around, in the middle of a rainstorm. When the noise became more urgent, Luke shook himself, stepped out of his cover and closed the distance between him and the dumpster. Walking around it and peering inside a carton box, Luke felt the air being punched out of him.

Cats…

A mother and three small ones…

Only a small one was moving, the reason for the noise.

Luke felt a sudden cold that had nothing to do with the rain, when he put his hand inside the box.

“They are dead…” a voice suddenly spoke behind him and Luke jumped in fright.

An old lady, with a flowery rain coat was standing behind him with a sad look on her face.

“If no one takes care of that little one, he will join his mother and siblings…” she was looking at Luke with something akin to wistfulness. “I can’t keep him, but I can make sure the rest of them find a resting place…”

Luke felt a tug on his stomach. He looked between the tiny black kitten and the old lady and sighed.

“Don’t worry, my patents already have two, one more won’t be a problem…” the lady smiled at him, while Luke crouched in front of the box and grabbed the black furball.

The lady moved slowly, took the box and with a small wave walked away. Luke tucked the cat inside his jacket and walked home. He was only now noticing that while he spoke with the woman, it stopped raining.

When Luke got home, his parents were still absent, their training probably running late as his one did. Sighing at that, Luke quickly closed his bedroom door behind him, and let the small kitten roam free over his comfy bed.

“You are so small…” Luke whispered, his index finger touching the kitten’s head softly. He had no experience with small animals, both King and Sir were already big when he got to meet them and he couldn’t imagine those two being needy like the kitten was right now. According to Luke’s imagination, King and Sir probably were already born with their no-nonsense expression and short patience for squishes (something child Luke learned quickly).

The little being kept meowing, searching for something, under Luke’s worried eyes. He didn’t know if the cat was able of drinking milk from a plate and Dan’s kids didn’t leave any bottle behind… sighing, Luke rose from the floor, went to the kitchen, grabbed the milk, warmed it, took a clean cloth and returned to his bedroom. Using the cloth as a makeshift bottle so the cat could suckle the liquid, Luke watched, mesmerized, how the kitten almost attacked the milk with hunger.

After drinking it, the kitten rolled around himself, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. Luke was fascinated with the ability of the animal to just fall asleep like that and wondered, for a dark second, if he was really asleep. Just to make sure, he put his finger in front of the little nose and felt the gush of moving air.

“Luke, we are home!” his dad’s voice suddenly broke the quiet silence and Luke jumped in the air. He looked at the cat and the door, and scrambling to get out before any of his parents decided to check on him, and find a new animal in the bed, he almost bumped against his old man.

“Hey!” Luke said, with a weird kind of cheer, that made Andrew rise his eyebrows.

“Did you break anything expensive?” Andrew asked as a way of hello and Luke laughed,

“Of course not, old man! Don’t you trust me?”

“When you are acting like a scared squirrel, no, not really…” Andrew replied, nodding at Luke’s quickly moving hands, beating a quick tempo against his leg.

“I’m training for my music class, keeping the rhythm right…” Luke replied and Andrew scrunched his nose.

“You are as bad as him…” Andrew commented, turning around to face Neil, that was approaching the duo in the middle of the hallway.

“What’s going on? Did you break something, Luke?” Neil asked, messing with Luke’s hair, and noticing, with a secret smile, that it was getting harder to reach his head with every passing day.

“No…” Luke immediately said and Neil looked at him in surprise. He was half mad that his parents thought him so clumsy and half scared of what to do next.

“Are you okay? Did something happen? Do I need to kill someone?” Neil asked and, beside him, Andrew’s stance tensed.

“What?! No, no! It’s just something boring from school… a group project, and I don’t like who I ended up with…” Luke replied, hoping his lie would be smoother this time. Lie, apparently, was his decision for the time being...

By his parents’ worried faces he failed miserably. But still, seeing he didn’t want to explain himself, Neil and Andrew decided to give him his privacy for now. Later, if the need arose, they would intervene like two hurricanes in a path of destruction.

For two days, Neil and Andrew observed Luke’s strange behavior with rising amusement. The boy would try to sneak around during the night to grab milk from the kitchen, he stole (very clumsily) Sir’s first litter-box, there were scratches on his hands and arms and black fur on his clothes. It literally took Andrew and Neil a couple of hours to know what was going on…

“Should we tell him that we know?” Neil asked by the end of the second day, while lazily kissing Andrew on their bedroom’s balcony.

Andrew moved away from Neil’s face to watch his pleased smile.

“What? And end these boundless days of amusement? Seeing someone with worst plans and lies than you is something to be cherished…” Andrew replied and Neil huffed a laugh, his eyes dancing with merriment.

“So, we are going to wait until he breaks… People would judge our parenting, you know?” Neil replied, nuzzling Andrew’s nose.

Andrew decided to ignore him and worry about something more important, like transporting Neil to the bed and close the balcony door.

  

* * *

 

Finally, by the end of the fourth day, Luke presented himself in the living room, while Neil and Andrew were watching a documentary on lions, acting like a soldier ready to be disciplined by a higher command.

“I have something to tell you…” Luke sighed and then, messing with his hoodie, brought out a small black cat.

Neil felt his heart hammer in his chest. No one would ever say Neil Abram Josten wasn’t a sucker for small mammals, a certain blond midget included.

“This is it…” Luke said, letting Neil peruse all over the small animal, while Andrew tried to keep Sir and King away for now.

“It?” Andrew asked and Neil scoffed at him.

“He has a name, right?” Neil asked and Luke looked embarrassed, if slightly relieved his parents weren't getting mad at him for hiding a pet in his bedroom.

“Yeah, that… I’ve been calling him It, actually…”

“I can hear Nicky, all the way from Germany, screaming into the void…” Neil commented, touching the fur between the tiny ears with care. “It… Honestly… You are too cute for that name!”

Andrew and Luke shared a look over Neil's head, a mix of fondness and exasperation at the man's reactions to a simple cat.

“What do you want to call him? If you ask Nicky he will answer something obnoxious like Mr. Von Sunshine or Mr. Whiskers of Cattown…” as soon as Andrew said those words he immediately rethought his dead wish, because Neil’s eyes shone with merriment and it was never a good thing to happen when naming an animal…

“What about… Mr. Doom Von Sunshine?” Neil suggested. “He is so dark and doomy…” Neil continued, but his eyes were looking at Andrew. “But has a soft side…”

“Are we still talking about my cat? Or are you two flirting? Because if it is the second, I need to update my betting pool with Aunt Allison…” Luke said with a smile and Andrew rolled his eyes at him. “Dad, he can have all those weird names, but let’s just call him Doom, for obvious reasons, okay?”

 

_(If, a few days later, Neil sent all the Foxes a picture of the five members of their family, with the kitten at the front, with the sentence “Meet Mr. Doom Von Sunshine”, and Nicky immediately called him back, sobbing and screeching that he named a cat after Andrew, Neil would never tell Andrew. He was too fond of having Nicky alive and Erik not be a widower to do something like that…)_


End file.
